Hi there,
[b]There's a TL;DR at the end of this wall of text if you're in a hurry.[/b]
Let me preface this with the fact that I've always had issues with motion sickness in first person shooters. I've not played many of them. The only FPS I have almost zero issues with is Overwatch. Every other FPS has made me almost instantly nauseous within about 30 seconds. Good news, everyone! D2 doesn't... always?
I've just played the Warlock opening (and loved it!) and I've got some feedback.
[i]Current hardware: (Skylake i5-6600 @ 3.30 GHz, NVIDIA 950 GTX, 16GB ram, Windows 7 64 bit home.) 60fps stable with all graphics in game turned to their lowest settings (surprisingly still looks awesome, whoa.) FOV: 105, all other settings standard.[/i]
[b]1.) Weaponbob / headbob needs to be able to be turned off.[/b] Having my frame of vision moving constantly induces a lot of nausea and visual noise that I can't screen out. Switching to the default rifle which moved less helped a lot, but the other larger rifles wobbling back and forth was a pretty big problem. I also resized the window down to a smaller area and was able to alleviate some of this issue, but not all of it.
[b]2.) Random camera shaking. Please let this be able to be turned off or reduced greatly.[/b] This was especially an issue during [spoiler]the scenes of the bombardment. [/spoiler] Having the camera shake wildly was incredibly difficult to work through and I had to stop playing for about five minutes.
[b]3.) Blurred movement lighting effects:[/b] In some places there are issues where the camera focus blurs sideways, [spoiler](like on the large enemy ship with the laser cannons you run past to get to the shield generator.)[/spoiler] or rain obscures your helmet's view. While this is really immersive, it's also really hard to see through and causes some nausea.
[b]4.) Bloom / strobe lights / flashlight mode / muzzle flare are all kind of blinding and weirdly bright:[/b] Not so much a nausea issue, but it could be an issue for people with a lowered seizure threshold. The main problem appears to be the amount of contrast between dark/light areas. Adjusting the contrast in game did not help much, unfortunately. My monitor is calibrated for graphic design, so I don't believe it's the issue.
[b]5.) Jumping / double jumping on the Warlock feels really weird, inconsistent and swimmy. [/b] Not sure if it's me or what, but definitely made me a bit dizzy.
[b]6.) Menu movement: [/b]When you mouse over the menu, the whole thing moves sideways. Somewhat disorienting and weird?
[b]7. A notification for when you [i]can't[/i] pick something up would be nice.[/b] I spent a bit of time mashing E while staring at a green box on the floor trying to pick it up only to realize it was a health pack and I was full health and didn't need it. (Go easy on me, I'm new.) (EDIT: This was apparently an ammo brick I didn't need and I'm an idiot. Thanks for being kind about it, no sarcasm. :D )
**I get that most of these things are actually immersion for regular folks and that's fine.** I also understand that most of these requests are quality of life tweaks for a minority of the gaming population. Still, I'm really excited since the nausea wasn't 100% overwhelming and constant. D2 could be very easily accessible with a few tweaks.
[b]Not so TL;DR:[/b] Headbob/weapon bob needs to be able to be disabled as it's nausea-inducing. Random camera shaking is *super* nausea-inducing. Also, holy bloom, Batman! Contrast in game is kind of a problem. Warlock jumping is unresponsive and weird (I may be doing it wrong.) Why does the menu move again? Lighting and movement effects in some places are overwhelming and nausea-inducing. (Yes, I have motion blur disabled.) Please tell idiot users like myself when we need to stop staring at the floor at unlootable items. :) Thank you!
Thanks for reading this if you've gotten this far. It's obvious that there's a huge amount of love and care poured into this game and as I'm an artist, it's really a joy to look at. The opening cinematic hooked me immediately and I've never felt so emotionally attached to a small, interesting-looking cube before. Congratulations to the Bungie team, you guys have made a really lovely game.
Good luck to everyone. :D
-Runesael
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Passes paper bag, fill it up and carry on 🤢